On Tuesday in Australia we have the Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy board meeting
Expected is 'on hold' (preview here, and more to come next week)
The following day we get Q4 GDP
- Early expectations from surveys of economists are showing for +0.5% q/q (prior was +0.9%),
- +2.6% y/y (prior 2.5%)
Exports were a strong contributor to the previous number, and on the plus side for Q4 should be housing investment, consumer spending (confidence to spend has picked up with the better labour market ... there are concerns job growth has been overstated, but even if there has been an overstatement, there has been underlying strength; a whole year of data is not wrong. Low wage growth - this week we got the weakest wage growth result ever - has two sides, there isn't as much to spend, but lower priced labour has been contributing to the fall in unemployment and more employment)
On the weaker side, yesterday we got poor capex data, with non-mining capex not showing its taking the place of the fall in mining investment, and we've seen other weak data in the form of construction work.
Prior to the GDP release next we see Q4 company profits & inventories, which could influence expectations for the GDP
